


Slightly Magic

by prairie_dust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coffee Shop Adjacent, M/M, Magic, Occult, Tarot, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24082663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairie_dust/pseuds/prairie_dust
Summary: Castiel gives a very important card reading one beautiful spring morning.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Slightly Magic

**Author's Note:**

> I'm nervous putting this on the archive because it came together so uncannily quickly that I'm convinced I must have read something similar to this before and I have a terrible memory, but I have crawled through the tarot tags, my reading history, and have even tried to search tumblr and can't find anything quite like it so... have a beautiful spring day with our boys at the beach.

Castiel gathered up his precisely arranged tarot cards with a practiced hand as the giggling clutch of teenagers left his table, and rapped once on the squared-up deck to clear it of their effusive, exuberant energy before setting it out in front of him to await another querent. He took a sip of water and sat back to watch the crowd for a moment while he centered himself again. 

The early spring sun cut out crisp shadows on the boardwalk and warmed the expanse of sand at his back. Some particularly adventurous beach-goers were venturing out into the still chilled water, but most people were just enjoying a sunny day out, carrying steaming coffees and piping-hot teas and warm doughnuts as they began their Saturday morning strolls through drifts of seagulls and skittering sandpipers.

He shifted in his seat again. He wasn’t completely satisfied with the way that reading had just gone-- whether it was the way in which the gaggle of youths hadn’t seemed to take him very seriously, or perhaps he was just going to have one of those days where the great flow was hard to reach. One of them had asked about a crush, and quite frankly the cards had not been encouraging, but knowing that teenagers had such fragile inner lives he’d tried to be as gentle as he could. He tapped his fingers on the cards, lost in thought until he heard footsteps close by. A man approached his table and peered under the canopy, holding one of Castiel’s fluttering silk scarves away from his face.

“You tell fortunes, mister?” the man asked.

“The cards give advice, it’s up to you to take it,” Castiel answered serenely, playing the part of the wise mystic even if he wasn’t quite feeling up to it.

“Can you, ah, can you do me?”

Castiel hesitated, then answered, “I can. Five dollars for one card, ten for three, and for twenty-five dollars I’ll do a half hour general reading.”

The newcomer looked at him a little challengingly. “How about one card, one really awesome card, and then we’ll see what happens?”

Castiel looked back at him levelly, meeting this man’s grass-green gaze with a challenge of his own. “I don’t draw the card, you do. Your fate is in your own hands.”

The man sat down and held up a finger. “One _awesome_ card.”

Castiel handed over the deck. “Fine. One card it is. Think of your question for a moment. Then spread these in front of you and move them around until you feel that you’ve shuffled them completely.”

The querent flexed his fingers and began swirling the cards over the tabletop. “How do I know when they’re done?” he asked, glancing up and nearly tossing a handful of cards over the edge.

Castiel tried not to laugh as the young man artlessly scooped the slithering cards back onto the table. “Whenever you feel that you’ve reordered them sufficiently you can stop. Keep your question in your mind, though.”

The querent harrumphed and continued moving the cards around. Castiel felt emboldened to study the man as he continued to shuffle the cards very thoroughly. He had a fine spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose and over his cheeks, a testament to days spent outdoors even in winter. His nails were stained with charcoal and his hands were square and capable-- he held them palms-up when he was done, like a stage magician, smiling in satisfaction.

Castiel smiled back and told him to pick up the deck, after which he took the cards back. “What did you ask?”

The man looked a little coy. “Isn’t that private?”

Castiel shrugged. “It can be but it helps if you say it aloud.”

“Like, it helps the spirits or whatever?”

Castiel just smiled cryptically.

“Okay.” He looked up and took a deep breath before saying loudly, “So, uh, spirits or whatever, what does my future hold?”

Castiel winced. That was his least favorite kind of question when doing a single card. If the querent picked the Tower or the Three of Swords or something else disheartening, there was little he could do to ease their mind. Drawing a single card was always something of a risk. But this guy gave him an impish smirk, so Castiel let him have at it.

He spread the deck out in a graceful arc across the table. “Very well, choose one of these cards and turn it over.”

The freckled man glowered at the cards almost cartoonishly for a good while before picking one nearly square in the middle, then flipped it over to reveal the sixth trump. 

The Lovers.

Castiel blinked.

Of course. Of course this man would come to his table and out of seventy-eight mixed-up cards he would choose this one.

On this card a naked couple stood together in the garden of Eden under the gaze of a benevolent angel, hands possibly-- no probably-- reaching towards one another, and as though the symbolism of the card wasn’t obvious enough, it did, of course, have the name of the card spelled out at the bottom.

“Ooh, naked people, I like that,” the man said grinning. “Does it mean I’m gonna get lucky?”

Castiel squinted at the man across the table from him. “How did you do that?”

“Do what? It’s random! You watched me mix them up!”

“Did you plant it?”

“Why? Is it a good one? Does it mean I’m going to meet a tall, dark, handsome somebody and get to have coffee with him?”

“You’re being weirdly specific. This card doesn’t indicate anything of the sort.” Cas sniffed.

“Well?”

“Well what?” Castiel asked, a little testily, gathering up the deck.

“Are you going to come have coffee with me?”

“I’m working.”

“Fine, I’ll bring you something and we’ll call it even. What do you want?”

“A large matcha latte this time, thank you,” Castiel answered primly, knocking once on his cards to dispel his boyfriend’s mischievous energy. He remembered the fumbled cards suddenly and something occurred to him. What if Dean really had planted it? “Wait, hold on a second.” He counted the cards quickly. Only seventy-eight. It wasn’t a plant. 

Dean was grinning even more ferociously.

“Seriously, how did you do that?” If it was slight-of-hand, then perhaps Dean had somehow switched the trusty Waite-Smith deck with a duplicate that was full of only Lovers cards? He turned them over quickly and fanned them out, only to reveal the same deck of cards that he’d been using for years.

Dean shrugged. “Hey, you said my fate was in my hands.”

Castiel stared up at him, a little bit fazed. “Well, okay,” he said dazedly.

“Be right back,” Dean said, turning to leave.

“You know, sometimes the Lovers means that a-- a choice has to be made,” Castiel spluttered as Dean angled towards the coffee shop across the way.

Dean spun around, still grinning. “Oh, do you want coffee instead?”

Castiel sighed in exasperation and shook his head.

Dean winked and disappeared into the coffee shop where they’d officially met almost a year ago, after having worked in anonymous proximity to one another every weekend for months.

Castiel felt a little dizzy. 

Each card in his hand contained a myriad of nuanced meanings; each one of those were facets that glinted and played off the light of other cards in a complex array of potentialities. A good diviner knew how to draw out the story that they told. He’d had many a hair-raising experience with the very cards he held now, but none so close to home as this one. These cards had told Castiel hundreds of stories over the years-- stories of grief, of triumph, stories of hard luck and hard decisions, but once, today, they had spun the simplest, clearest tale of all.

A tale of true love.

Some feeling inside him began to crystallize and take on a new shape. He’d fallen in love with Dean almost at first sight, but this-- this was love to an infinite degree. He wondered if the crowd flowing around him could feel it spreading into the universe like ripples over water. 

Sometimes, he thought, sometimes it helped to see a thing, to know that it was completely real.

He was still staring at the coffee shop when Dean emerged, not caring how many passers-by had passed him by in the meantime. He took his tea gratefully and let Dean try to smooth his wind-tossed hair.

“You make everything better,” he said, momentarily awestruck by the generous, funny man who had nervously introduced himself over their accidentally swapped beverages last spring.

He might never know whether or not Dean had managed to manipulate the deck or whether he’d really drawn that card after tapping into the great flow that connected everything. Castiel hoped that it would be a mystery until the stars ceased to shine.

Dean smiled. “I know.”

Castiel laughed and gestured down the way, past the end of the boardwalk where an avenue of concrete began. The little stand where Dean sketched caricatures every weekend was still closed. “You’re running late now. Go draw some people,” he teased.

Dean leaned in for a kiss and sauntered off.

Castiel frowned and thumbed through the deck, still mystified. While the Page of Pentacles had suffered an unfortunate bend in one corner and there was a visible scratch on the back of the Nine of Wands, nothing about the Lovers card could set it apart from any of the others. 

He looked up as a shadow crossed his table.

“Hey, mister, do you really tell fortunes?” a young woman asked from the perimeter of his canopy, hands held shyly behind her back.

He straightened up. “What would you like to know?”

“I want to know if I’m ever going to fall in love,” she answered wistfully.

“Today is a very good day to ask that question,” he replied.

“I thought you looked like the kind of person who knows about that,” she said, sounding relieved.

He smiled. “Have a seat, let’s consult the cards.”

Cas set the deck before him as his new querent sat down, the background chatter and laughter of the crowd that surrounded him-- with all their various fates and destinies-- fading away as he watched her swirl the cards into a new constellation, into her own inimitable story.

He glanced out at the ocean and saw a blazing white heron soar along the horizon.

Today was a very good day to find out about love.


End file.
